NASA's first-ever moon temperature-mapping effort has returned its first data.

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), an unmanned mission to comprehensively map the entire moon, has returned its first data. One of the seven instruments aboard, the Diviner Lunar Radiometer Experiment, is making the first global survey of the temperature of the lunar surface while the spacecraft orbits some 31 miles above the moon.

Diviner has obtained enough data already to characterize many aspects of the moon's current thermal environment. The instrument has revealed richly detailed thermal behavior, throughout both the north and south polar regions, that extends to the limit of Diviner's spatial resolution of just a few hundred yards.